A new study on how the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns impacted church attendance in the United States has found that roughly one in three Americans now say they’ve stopped attending religious services.
The pandemic lockdowns disrupted religious participation for millions of Americans, notes the study, titled “Faith After the Pandemic: How COVID-19 Changed American Religion,” conducted by the Survey on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute.
In the summer of 2020, only 13% of Americans reported attending in-person worship services, which increased to 27% by the spring of 2022, but the rates of worship attendance were still lower than they were before the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, it adds.
In the spring of 2022, 33% of Americans reported they never attend religious services, compared to 25% who reported this before the pandemic, as per the survey, which clarifies that only a few among the most religiously engaged Americans are part of that group.
The largest declines in attendance were seen among adults younger than 50, adults with a college degree or less, Hispanic Catholics, black Protestants, and white mainline Protestants, it explains.
However, the largest increases in attendance during these two periods were seen among adults aged 30–49, adults with less than a college degree, and black Protestants.
Conservatives, adults age 50 and older, women, married adults, and those with a college degree were more likely to attend than were other groups in both periods. “Much of this decline in attendance was due to people completely abstaining from worship,” the survey says.
Nationally, religious identity among American adults stayed largely consistent during the pandemic, with minimal evidence of religious switching during this period, the study adds.
While 19% of adults changed their religious identification during the pandemic, including 6% who were unaffiliated pre-pandemic but reported a religious identity in spring 2022, 5% who reported a religion pre-pandemic were unaffiliated in spring 2022.
Last August’s edition of the “State of the Bible: USA 2022” report from the American Bible Society found that 40% of Generation Z adults ages 18 and older attended church “primarily online.” They were followed closely by 36% of churchgoers ages 77 and older. (SOURCE)
